“Nanon, we are alone, you and I.”
“Yes, mam’selle; if I only knew where he was, the charming young gentleman, I would set off on foot to find him.”
“The sea lies between us,” said Eugénie.
While the poor lonely heiress, with her faithful old servant for company, was shedding tears in the cold, dark house, which was all the world she knew, men talked from Orléans to Nantes of nothing but Mlle. Grandet and her seventeen millions. One of her first acts was to settle a pension of twelve hundred francs on Nanon, who, possessing already an income of six hundred francs of her own, at once became a great match. In less than a month she exchanged her condition of spinster for that of wife, at the instance and through the persuasion of Antoine Cornoiller, who was promoted to the position of bailiff and keeper to Mlle. Grandet. Mme. Cornoiller had an immense advantage over her contemporaries; her large features had stood the test of time better than those of many a comelier woman. She might be fifty-nine years of age, but she did not look more than forty; thanks to an almost monastic regimen, she possessed rude health and a high color, time seemed to have no effect on her, and perhaps she had never looked so well in her life as she did on her wedding day. She had the compensating qualities of her style of ugliness, she was tall, stout, and strong; her face wore an indestructible expression of good humor, and Cornoiller’s lot seemed an enviable lot to many beholders.
“Fast color,” said the draper.
“She might have a family yet,” said the drysalter; “she is as well preserved as if she had been kept in brine, asking your pardon.”
“She is rich; that fellow Cornoiller has done a good day’s work,” said another neighbor.
When Nanon left the old house and went down the crooked street on her way to the parish church, she met with nothing but congratulations and good wishes. Nanon was very popular with her neighbors. Eugénie gave her three dozen spoons and forks as a wedding present. Cornoiller, quite overcome with such munificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his eyes; he would have let himself be cut in pieces for her. Mme. Cornoiller became Eugénie’s confidential servant; she was not only married, and had a husband of her own, her dignity was yet further increased, her happiness was doubled. She had at last a storeroom and a bunch of keys; she too gave out provisions just as her late master used to do. Then she had two subordinates—a cook and a waiting-woman, who took charge of the house linen and made Mlle. Grandet’s dresses. As for Cornoiller, he combined the functions of forester and steward. It is needless to say that the cook and the waiting-woman of Nanon’s choosing were real domestic treasures. The tenants scarcely noticed the death of their late landlord; they were thoroughly broken in to a severe discipline, and M. and Mme. Cornoiller’s reign was no whit less rigorous than that of the old regime.
Eugénie was a woman of thirty, and as yet had known none of the happiness of life. All through her joyless, monotonous childhood she had had but one companion, the broken-spirited mother, whose sensitive nature had found little but suffering in a hard life. That mother had joyfully taken leave of existence, pitying the daughter, who must still live on in the world. Eugénie would never lose the sense of her loss, but little of the bitterness of self-reproach mingled with her memories of her mother.
Love, her first and only love, had been a fresh source of suffering for Eugénie. For a few brief days she had seen her lover; she had given her heart to him between two stolen kisses; then he had left her and had set the lands and seas of the world between them. Her father had cursed her for this love; it had nearly cost her her mother’s life; it had brought her pain and sorrow and a few faint hopes. She had striven towards her happiness till her own forces had failed her, and another had not come to her aid.
Our souls live by giving and receiving; we have need of another soul; whatever it gives us we make our own, and give back again in overflowing measure. This is as vitally necessary for our inner life as breathing is for our corporeal existence. Without that wonderful physical process we perish; the heart suffers from lack of air, and ceases to beat. Eugénie was beginning to suffer.
She found no solace in her wealth; it could do nothing for her; her love, her religion, her faith in the future made up all her life. Love was teaching her what eternity meant. Her own heart and the Gospel each spoke to her of a life to come; life was everlasting, and love no less eternal. Night and day she dwelt with these two infinite thoughts, perhaps for her they were but one. She withdrew more and more into herself; she loved, and believed that she was loved.
For seven years her passion had wholly engrossed her.
Her treasures were not those millions left to her by her father, the money that went on accumulating year after year; but the two portraits which hung above her bed, Charles’ leather case, the jewels which she had bought back from her father, and which were now proudly set forth on a layer of cotton wool inside the drawer in the old chest, and her aunt’s thimble which Mme. Grandet had used; every day Eugénie took up a piece of embroidery, a sort of Penelope’s web, which she had only begun that she might wear the golden thimble, endeared to her by so many memories.
It seemed hardly probable that Mlle. Grandet would marry while she was still in mourning. Her
